nancy birdsong '78: advocating for others
We did not weave the web of life.
We are merely strands in it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
Seattle, Chief of the Suquamish Indians.
Those words, uttered more than a century and a half ago, speak loudly to Nancy Birdsong, so loudly, in fact, that she lives them every single day.
To the 1978 Collegiate graduate, the principle they express is “interconnectedness.” It’s one of the factors that motivated her to earn a doctor of ministry degree from Union Theological Seminary four years after graduating from the University of Virginia and narrowing her career choices to law and medicine.
It’s what has inspired her to volunteer in soup kitchens, juvenile detention centers, and shelters for runaways, for abused children, for battered women, and for the homeless.
It’s what called her to churches in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New York State, where for the past 13 years she’s served as associate pastor at The Presbyterian Church in Geneva.
It’s what led her to embattled cities in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia in 1998 and Kosovo in 1999.
It’s what compelled her to travel to the West Bank, a war-torn strip along the Jordan River and for generations the site of bitter conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and serve with the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) for three weeks during the summer of 2006.
“There’s a point when you have to choose between the importance of your safety and going where your heart says is right,” she said. “If I care about peace in the world, if I truly care, I must be willing to take a risk and step outside my comfort zone.”
Founded in 1984, CPT is an internationally supported, multi-denominational organization which emphasizes public witness, non-violence, and protection of human rights. Its volunteers do not proselytize or take sides. Instead, together with peacemakers of other faiths, they act as international observers, monitor human rights abuses, and serve as advocates for the oppressed, disenfranchised, and powerless.
Birdsong saw deprivation, pain, and humiliation. She saw the innocent suffer unspeakable injustices. She saw survivors of atrocities cower in fear. She listened and learned. She counseled refugees and helped them begin to heal.
Although she wore the distinctive red cap of the CPT, she was twice stoned by extremist settlers and almost daily found herself staring into the barrel of a militant’s M-16.
“What tore at my heart,” she said, “was that I had seen those same rifles pointed at too many children. “It wasn’t courage that prompted me to ignore the warnings. It was indignation and an overwhelming certainty that God doesn’t intend for anyone to live this way.”
She saw glimmers of hope as well. She recalls the words of Ravid, an Israeli whose daughter Samara died at the hands of a suicide bomber: “We share the same pain, and we can either use it as a weapon to destroy each other or to work for peace.”
She thinks often of an elderly shopkeeper in Bethlehem who carves figures from olive wood, but, with the beleaguered city’s economy in shambles, has few buyers.
“Instead of cursing the darkness,” he told her, “light a candle.”
Humble to a fault, Birdsong feels that her emotional journey of faith strengthened her much more than her presence on the West Bank aided those “on the downside of the power equation.”
“Anything that expands your sense of compassion and empathy enriches you,” she explained. “You try to make a difference. You don’t do it for the thank you’s. You do it because your heart’s in it. I’m always inspired by the people I serve.”
